Nod Ring Lets You Control Gadgets With a Wave of the Hand

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Nod Ring Lets You Control Gadgets With a Wave of the Hand

It's been long rumored that Apple is making a ring, and there is some truth to that–it's just that the ring in question is the company's new headquarters. In terms of a wearable ring that interacts with devices when you point at them and make Mutombo gestures, a device called Nod looks like it will get there first.

A lot of wearables keep tabs on health or sleeping habits, but Nod takes a different approach. It’s a gesture-based ring that can be used to control various gadgets. It essentially distills the wave-your-hands UI of a Leap Motion controller into a small circle, while also eliminating the need for external sensors. Other than the ring and a Bluetooth connection to a device, you don’t need any other hardware to make Nod’s system work.

The stainless-steel ring is packed with motion sensors, a Bluetooth 4.0 antenna, and a pair of processors. According to Nod co-founder and CEO Anush Elangovan, the ring uses a Bluetooth Low Energy connection for all its needs; early prototypes of the ring included tests for NFC and Wi-Fi Direct chips, but those were too power-hungry and big.

Because of Bluetooth 4.0’s energy-efficiency, the Nod ring is able to squeeze an entire day’s worth of battery life out of a mere 23-mAh battery–essentially a rechargeable watch battery. The ring can also connect to Wi-Fi-controlled devices by using a smartphone as a Bluetooth gateway. Nod says the ring is designed to be worn all day–you can wear it while you’re in the shower or taking a swim, just as long as you don’t go below 170 feet.

Weighing in at about 2 ounces, it’s definitely bulkier than your average wedding band. But the ring is designed to be worn on an index finger, and it flares out into a flat control surface on the palm side. This area hosts a touch-sensitive strip you control with swipes of your thumb. On the sides of that strip are more sensors, which recognize when adjacent fingers are touching the ring. According to Elangovan, that’s the secret behind how the ring is able to sense two- or three-finger swiping gestures.

A few of its use-cases seem practical. Waving your hand back and forth to navigate through business presentations, tapping and swiping the ring to use it as a remote control for your phone’s music player, and using the ring as a Kinect-like motion sensor while you’re playing games on a TV or a tablet all seem convenient.

As demoed, a few tricks seem like they’d be even more frustrating than traditional input methods, such as using the ring to input text onscreen while waving your hand around to navigate a Swype keyboard. Other features look like they will appeal solely to your inner sloth: Adjusting Philips Hue bulbs with the wave of a hand or twisting a Nest thermostat knob from across the room. The company has opened up the Nod API, allowing developers can create their own apps and interactive scenarios for the device.

When it becomes available this fall for $150, the company says the ring-controller will be compatible with Android and iOS phones and tablets, Windows PCs and Macs, GoPro cameras, Roku boxes, newer LG TVs, and… Google Glass.

So that means you'll be able to navigate a pair of glasses tethered to your smartphone with a fancy gesture-control ring. Ah, the future is finally here.